Reverend Michael Jamison

Reverand Michael Jamison and his wife Apollonia have been with Unity of Topeka since October, 1989.

Michael and Apollonia were married the day after his graduation from the ministeral school at Unity Village. They had met at Unity Village where they were both living and working before he began ministerial school. After their marriage they began looking for a church within 100 miles of Unity Village, as Apollonia had a management position at the village that was too good to leave. Topeka's Unity Church of Christianity was the perfect solution, being 91 miles away.
Michael said a major influence in his life has been Henry David Thoreau. He became a life member of the
Thoreau Society
while in graduate school. Two years ago he went to Concord, Massachusetts, and spent a week at Walden Pond. He found it a highly spiritual experience.
Michael grew up in a Luteran family in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
“My Lutheran upbringing was good, as it got me going on a spiritual path,” Michael said. "But already at age 13 I knew I was not a true Lutheran."

Neverthless, he earned his B.A. in psychology and sociology in Valparaiso University, a college owned by the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. “To graduate from Valpo, you almost had to have a minor in theology. After taking all those college theology courses, I realized all the more that I needed to find a spirituality that worked for me.”

After attending the University of Wisconsin graduate school, Michael moved to Seattle, Washington, were he married the woman who was to become the mother of his children, Kyra and Benjamin. Wanting to be back-to-the-landers, they moved to the upper peninsula of Michigan. Not finding any religion that satisfied, Michael decided to create his own religion and started delivering lectures every Wednesday at his home.

One night he was lecturing on the book Handbook to Higher Consciousness by Ken Keyes, Jr., when the local librarian told him it sounded like Unity.

“I contacted the Association of Unity Churches, realizing I did not need to reinvent the wheel. The major thing that impressed me with Unity was the belief that everything in our lives is due to us. To blame others gets you nowhere. The liberation impressed me.”

He started a Unity Study Group that met every week in his home near Lake Superior.

“I did this for six months and then decided I needed to do it for real. I wanted to go to Unity Village.”

Against her wishes, Michael moved his wife and their two children to Unity Village, Missouri. He was then informed by his wife that she would not be a Unity minister’s wife. “She was right, of course,” said Michael, who also lost his Michigan house and forty acres of land in the move. “But to be ‘Unitized’, I would do it all over again.”

Our church is blessed by having Michael and Appolonia leading us. Michael serves many more postions than minister. He is also the gardener, choir member, newspaper editor, and jack-of-all- trades.

Apollonia is a Licensed Unity Teacher and a talented member of the choir.

Parts of this piece were written by Dianne Lawson for the church newsletter.

Our minister, Michael Jamison, writes more than spiritually-minded essays. His novel, a fictionalized historical romance about a real-life Hungarian hero of the 15th Century, is now up as an e-book at
AmazonThis fall his second novel is up, which is an allegory written science fiction style.